A major Dwarf Fortress expansion modification for DF 0.34.11 by narhiril. Now with ASCII!!!

You (the dwarves) are not the first people to walk the earth. You are not the largest, not the strongest, not the most advanced or intellegent, and certainly not the most prosperous. What becomes of your race is your doing - will you thrive or will you split into warring sects? Will you make peace with your neighbors or be destroyed by them? Will you adapt and invent, or will you fall behind? Will your people learn from the mistakes of past civilizations, some far more advanced than your own, or will you be doomed to repeat them? Uncover their legends. Discern their secrets. Strike the earth, but be prepared for the earth to strike back.

Dwarf Fortress is, in my opinion, best described as an epic tale generator with varying levels of user input. LFR is designed to make each of those tales even more epic.

LFR is about fundamentally raising the stakes of Dwarf Fortress without changing any of the things that make it already so enjoyable. The ultimate goal is that you won't get "bored" anymore. Instead of sitting on a heap of goblin corpses, lauding yourselves and letting your citizens grow fat and old, you'll need to fight for every inch of your legacy. The bog trolls want your stuff. The lizardmen and goblins want you dead. The voidwalkers will do anything to prevent you from reaching their level of technical prowess. The shedim want to eat your corpses. Sure, there are the meowkin and nephilim and elves and men who will help you, to varying extents, but to obtain their help, you need to help them get to you. Your race is besieged on all sides by forces larger, more numerous, and more advanced than your own. They will drive you from the earth, or they will drive you deep underground, where even more savage threats lurk. But with this risk comes reward. With desperation comes opportunity. You must hold the deep to hold the surface, and only through constant struggle will you create anything worth engraving on a wall. Even if you somehow prevail, the attacks will continue on all sides until you fall or your computer explodes. Everything you do will feel more important.

Fortification alone will not bring you glory. You fortify to buy yourself time to innovate and advance so that you won't have to fortify anymore. Even if your current dwarves are safe, you cannot interact with the outside world if you shut yourself in a hole, and there is so much more glory to be gained from that interaction. No one will remember you if they don't know you exist. There is so much more glory to be won, so many more legacies to be written. If you're a real dwarf, that's motivation enough.

Dig deeper. Invent. Create. Research. Advance. You must do these things or you will do what countless others have done before you - die in isolation, leaving little more behind than piles of rock and ash. Is it more exciting to read - or, through DF, experience - a story that ends with an impenetrable, but isolated fortification, or the twists and turns, mishaps and breakthroughs of a society that flourishes because it refuses to die even in the face of impossible odds? I don't think I need to put up a poll for that question. Rather than atop the bones of goblins, your civilization will be built with the bones of your heroes who will lay down their lives and legacy for a chance to preserve your race for one more generation. Your graveyard will be littered with memorials to dwarves, each with a different role in the tale.

An alchemist who gave his life to the study of materials, bringing about the discovery of ether.A swordsman, who took up the first ethereal weapon and held off the forces of the lizardmen council while the unarmed civilians retreated behind the walls to begin the siege.An engineer, who devised the trapped corridor that would break that siege.A miner, who struck orichalcum whilst hewing out the trap chamber.A machinist who took the new metal and created the first training dummy.An axe master, who trained for years on that training dummy and saved the fortress from a threat from below.

This is all possible with LFR - and I assure you, there is more to come.

0.21a released on 12/2/2013. As this was a very large update, the next version will deal with any issues that come up.

What does this mod do?

LFR turns the world of Dwarf Fortress into a living, breathing high fantasy universe without sacrificing the randomness and spirit that makes Dwarf Fortress what it is. LFR fixes issues with vanilla DF, performs significantly better, and overwrites only a tiny fraction of the original raws in doing so. So what does LFR add to the game? I'm so glad you asked...

New Races

-The bog trolls, a divided race of individual warlords and followers that inhabit the swamps and seek to win individual power and recognition.-The nephilim, a winged race of angelic humanoids who believe that they have been cast out from paradise as punishment for allowing the lesser races to endure.-The lizardmen, a tribal race of aquatic bipedals that are extremely xenophobic.-The voidwalkers, an insectoid mystery race with technology and materials that will challenge even the most established fortresses.-The meowkin, a trading race of cat people with questionable morals and a bizarre fashion sense.-The shedim, a race of wrinkled beasts that devour the flesh of other races to survive.-The moroii, a race of underground tribal people that cling to the relics of a long forgotten civilization.-The grum, a long-nosed race of blind underground miners who do not welcome other races into their domain.

Every race has its own nobility structure, its own lore files, its own language, its own military technology, and its own graphics. The shedim have caste-level graphics.

New Metals

-Mithril, a rare, dwarf-exclusive lighter counterpart to steel that must be refined in order to be used. Mithril does not require flux.-Vanadium, an economic metal used in the production of goods and high-strength alloys.-Damascus steel, an alloy of steel and vanadium for superior strength and performance.-White gold, an economic alloy of gold and nickel.-Voidshard, an unusual, very powerful metal that must be taken (by force) from the race that carries it.-Ether, a light, very high strength weapons material that can only be acquired through alchemy experiments. More on that later.-Tungsten, a magma-safe weapon material of higher density than silver.-Iovium, a rare, super-heavy, super-dense weapons material. The adamantine of blunt weapons.-A few other economic metals (cobalt, palladium, neodymium) used in higher level technical advancements. Which bring me to the next feature...

The Mechanical Tree

LFR introduces technical progression into Dwarf Fortress. When you embark, you can build all of the buildings you always could, but some other ones - and the special reactions they allow for - must be unlocked. LFR has two branches of progression - The "mechanical" tree and the "ritual" tree.

The mechanical tree follows dwarven alchemists and scientists as they make new discoveries, create new materials, improve old designs, and ultimately, create mechanical creatures. The tree has a very mad scientist/steampunk theme to it. The mechanical tree is structured vertically, with each advancement leading into the next advancement, from the humble beginnings of the dwarves in the Alchemy Labs to the cutting edge weapon and technologies of the Prototype Workbench and Mechanized Defense Laboratory. The mechanical tree currently has four "tiers" of advancement. Some possible products of this tech tree...

-Hybrid melee/ranged weapons.-Engraving weapons and ammunition with runes, giving them magical effects-Advanced forms of armor.-Experimental weapons, of which there are over seventy new types - many with special attacks for the combat logs!-Training workshops for martial, survival, and medical skills.-New uses for existing materials - for example, the ability to make bins out of stone or cheese from plants.-New materials, like ether (metal) and hadrine, a super-heavy material.-Lab accidents, making research a bit more !!FUN!!

The Ritual Tree

The ritual tree follows dwarven mystics and priests from their beginnings, offering prayers to a stone altar in the hope of earning some sort of favor, to the establishment of a pantheon and themed temples to various deities. The ritual tree is structured more horizontally than the mechanical tree, with higher level buildings simply requiring a larger resource investment. The ritual tree currently has three "tiers" of advancement, with a fourth in the works. Some possible products of this tech tree...

-Unorthodox ways of producing resources via ritual - i.e. exchanging plants or bones for weapons and armor.-Prayers - reactions that slowly generate specific resources while staffed.-A few new types of weapons, armor, trap components, and other surprises - like fireproof backpacks.-Gods' favor, allowing dwarves to transform into units that borrow power from their god's sphere of influence.-Combo abilities between units from different gods - i.e. a unit of Pharis (goddess of darkness) and a unit of Kerox (goddess of earth) can team up to provide nearby dwarves with a resistance to voidshard weapons.

LFR seamlessly integrates the procedurally-generated local deities (the "New Gods") with its own static pantheon (the "Old Gods," including Armok).

New Creatures

-New megabeasts, like the wyvern (flying dragon), ice-breathing dragons, manticores, behemoths, aatxes, and more!-Creatures with unusual abilities, like the jagged crystal dragon, which fires crystal projectiles in bursts, or the rakshasa, which creates illusionary copies of itself in combat.-New and terrifying natural threats, like the deep wolf, a creature that attacks in enormous swarms, and the damascus sentinel, a mechanical construct of an ancient civilization long since gone from the world.-New friendly creatures, like the bronze-shelled tortoise, a harmless above-ground creature that is a breeding source of shells, the sabre-toothed tiger and pygmy ankylosaur, two new war animals, and the carbuncle, a domestic creature with a lot of surprises to discover - which brings up one more of LFR's most prominent features...

EVERY LFR creature has a unique graphic.

Hidden Features and More

-New plants, alcohols, and food types. -Many, many easter eggs. -Rare creatures and rare creature drops.-Ancient underground ruins.-Mythical weapons, which grant the user buffs, abilities, or even curses! -New symbols, inscriptions, secrets, curses, and weather types.-Silly hats.-What you encounter in one fortress will not be the same as what you encounter next time!

LFR also include a manual, guides, and resources to help you navigate the brave new world you're entering. This is just a taste of the included features. If you want to learn more, you'll have to learn it yourself. LFR is there to be discovered, not revealed. Also, as I am very much obsessive-compulsive, expect frequent posts and updates until/unless otherwise stated.

Release Notes

While preliminary bug testing has been done to the best of my ability, some bugs or quirks are to be expected. Please report these to this forum thread, or contact me by email (provided in the manual).

It is strongly advised that you use a high or very high mineral distribution setting with this mod, as rare metals were balanced for this setting before the option to reduce mineral distribution existed. For those of you using advanced world generation, set "mineral scarcity" to a value between 100 (very frequent) and 300 (a bit less frequent) for best results.

Version numbers are weird, but this is intentional. I consider LFR to be a constant work in progress, and use the pre-1.0 version numbers to show this. You may see a version number like 0.19a and say to yourself, "oh, great, more pre-alpha garbage that is chock full of bugs and hasn't been refined at all," but you'd be wrong.

The errorlog will occasionally kick out an "Impoverished Word Selector" error in worlds with large numbers of civilizations. This has no noticeable effect on gameplay, and can be safely ignored or deleted.

The foundry is known to cause all of the stones that it can produce blocks from to be listed as economic stones by default. This is annoying, as you will have to manually change them back to mundane stones in the stone menu, but does not otherwise affect gameplay. There is currently no fix for this.

While not a bug, it is strongly advised that you use a high mineral distribution setting with this mod, as rare metals were balanced for this setting before the option to reduce mineral distribution existed. For advanced worldgen users, use a value between 100 and 300 for best results.

Putting runic inscriptions on ammunition currently only inscribes a single stack. A fix for this issue is being tested for the next version. Fixed in 0.21a

Underground shedim sieges don't currently function. A fix for this issue is being tested for the next version. Fixed, I hope.

Specific brew reactions don't work properly, kicking out generic "drinks." I am working on a fix for this. Fixed.Orichalcum precision tools cannot be made at a magma-powered alchemy lab. This is fixed for the next release. Fixed.Attempting to view the thoughts and preferences of an emberlight warrior will usually crash the game. I am investigating this issue further. Fixed.

These raws are early renditions of planned features for LFR that I have not yet had time to thoroughly test, or that I would like to open up to in-depth feedback. It is recommended that you use a world without anything terribly important in it when testing any of these raws.

(3/31/12) This link has been updated to contain test raws for the shedim, a new entity. It is compatible with LFR v0.16b and v0.17a.

(12/28/11) This link has been updated to contain a test save file for new developments. LFR-SC can now be found at a more permanent link from the main post.(11/12/11) This link has been updated for an 0.14e-compatible release.(10/17/11) This link has been updated for an 0.14d-compatible version.(10/1/11) This link now contains the first release of LFR's "simplified clothing" plug-in mod.(7/11/11) - revised alpha version, removed problematic fire and ice castes, tweaked remaining castes (bugfixes).(7/6/11) - uploaded "zingers" alpha raws by request.

Yes. I wanted to get the poll fixed, and I was informed that the only way to do that was to start a new thread and set it to unlimited duration this time (something about the way SMF handles permissions). Rather than bother a moderator about something trivial like that, I just moved the main post over here. It seemed an opportune time to change the name of the mod, too, because I get way too many people asking me about DnD / expressing disappointment about a lack of DnD and then moving on without bothering to look at what actually is here. I kept the acronym, for convenience's sake.

Also, I put up a small bugfix this morning (v0.11c). Damascus sentinels (and their spoiler-related version) weren't showing up in the xml dumps of populations, so it took me some time to figure out what was wrong with them since the error log was blank. They should be fixed and spawning consistently now. I also decided to play around a little with sphere alignments, particularly with the dwarves. I got a legendary axe dwarf with the epithet "the bodice of crews." I didn't think that was very dwarfy (or intimidating, for that matter), so I've messed around with the permitted symbols for dwarven names. Rest assured, Urist is still in there, but some others might not be as familiar.

Also, I found that the number of ambushes was getting silly. It was at the point where a meowkin caravan would show up only to be attacked by no less than NINE simultaneous ambushes of lizardmen, bog trolls, nephilim, and goblins. I thought this was getting out of hand - I'm working on ways to cause a bit more fighting between lizardmen, bog trolls, and nephilim. I have some ideas, but need some time to test them.

Oh, and I wrote all of the raws for the Advanced Mechanics Workshop today. I need a break, I have three finals this week. After that, I can hammer out some more.

I just want to say that I came back to play DF solely because of this mod, and the potential it has. Thank you.

I really appreciate it, guys. I really do take feedback seriously, and I am glad to know that the hours I have put into this are helping someone's experience.

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In other news, I got a bit of time today to hammer out some new concepts (and even some raws) for some buildings and "tech advancements" that will come from the Advanced Mechanics Lab. Here's what I've got so far.

1) Striking orichalcum (a new metal) and producing precision tools from it using a new reaction at the alchemy lab.2) Salvaging a clockwork pendant from a damascus sentinel (also done at the alchemy lab).

Both of these reactions use the mechanics skill and neither of these reactions have hazardous byproducts or fuel requirements.

The Medical Dummy - trains all medical skills except for diagnosis. Requires precision tools, any splint, and several advanced mechanisms to construct. Training wound dressing and suturing requires cloth and thread, but does not consume either.

The Crematorium - consumes a corpse or five vermin remains to create ash. This building is not linked or related to the tech tree. This is an idea that has been floating around the forums for a while, so I want to make sure I don't step on any toes or fail to give due credit before implementing it.

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As always, feedback is encouraged. Also, I have not forgotten those of you who have expressed interest in mythical elements to the tech tree. This is by no means a complete list of future developments. I have some very fun, mythical-themed elements planned for these next few releases as well, but I don't want to give them away just yet.

I know it was supposed to be "Atlantean Copper", or somesuch like. Did that mean it was just an isotope thereof?

In real life, most scholars think it was the same thing as rose gold - a copper-gold alloy.

I wanted to add a new metal for the "tech tree," but I wanted it to be pretty rare. I haven't settled on a name yet. I would consider one of the rare earth metals, but I was having trouble justifying it in my head. It has to be something that could be made into "precision tools," which means it has to have some set of properties not already found on in-game metals in order for me to justify only being able to make precision tools out of it (at least, for the first set, and then the first set could be used to make more tools out of more mundane materials).

I was thinking if I use a mythological metal, I can superimpose any properties I want onto it. With adamantine and mithril already in use, orichalcum was the first name that came to mind. I'm open to other ideas, though.

Right now, it's an orange metal that appears infrequently in a few types of common stone. I can change the color and name without much difficulty or thought, but I'm pretty confident that I have it where I want it from a distribution standpoint (I want it to appear infrequently on every map).

I am thinking of implementing a concept that hasn't really been used in other mods thus far (that I know of), but is a common element of many video games.

I am considering implementing more creatures with a "rare drop." That is, 9 out of 10 or even 49 out of 50 will die and leave corpses, as usual, but the occasional one will instead drop an item of some sort. This is possible and well within my ability to do using the caste system, but I am wondering how people feel about it. Should I reserve this sort of thing for the occasional easter egg, or would you like to see more of it? I don't want "farming" for drops to be necessary, because that's not particularly rewarding in my opinion, so these items will be purely fun in nature - perhaps in the form of a unique (but statistically unremarkable) weapon or armor/clothing item. I'm thinking these could be great fun for adventurers as well.

Oh, and I wrote the raws for the medical dummy earlier. Silly me, I should be studying. Oh well

I think it's pretty neat. I like the idea that you just happen to get lucky, and now you can have a unique weapon representative of whatever it is that was killed. Nothing to crazy that makes you much stronger or anything, just a bonus.

The only real problem is making sure that whatever has a "rare drop" isn't something that you can tame and breed, which is pretty easy to deal with, and making sure that it isn't in the realm of basically unobtainable because the chances are so low.

I've managed to track down some interesting new immersion elements. Reelyanoob was kind enough to allow me to take his version of the French language for this mod. I'll be using that for the meowkin from now on - it seems fitting.

As there seems to be a lot of distaste for the human language file, I'm moving the nephilim to Latin. I don't know who wrote the Latin language file that's been floating around (Reely didn't either), but if anyone has any idea, I'd like to include credit for it. I'm actually considering scrapping the human language altogether, as there are a number of other great language files floating around out there, but for now, I'm leaving it in.

The lizardmen have not been left out, either. I've got a special procedurally-generated language file for them based on the Basque language. That combined with some messing about with symbols leaves them with some pretty exotic names that I think you'll enjoy. .

I am leaving the bog trolls as is, because of their lore relation to the trolls of Goblin civilizations. It didn't seem unrealistic that they would use the same language, for names at least.

I'm still not sure why meowkin lads are being picked for that position, but I don't think I'll bother to try to fix it - that's kind of how the Meowkin roll anyway. They're the comic relief of a mod otherwise populated by terrifying dangers.

For the record, the Dwarven king's name was "Sakrith Steelecho." How BA is that?

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Also, thank you Patchouli for the feedback. Your ideas and concerns seem to match up with what I was thinking. I will probably use an uncommon (but not extremely rare) cavern creature for the first implementation - this should assure that it will show up on just about any embark.

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Last final is today. Expect some more updates/musings later in the afternoon. Right now I'm trying to get the populations of a spoiler-related creature right.

On Orichalcum again, maybe you could make it starmetal/thunderbolt/meteoric iron ? While Dwarves are more technologically advanced than almost everyone, I wouldn't think the meteoric deposits would be cashed yet. And of course, historically, meteoric iron was a highly prized resource for (usually more primitive) many societies.